


The Flowers of the Forest

by Mari_who



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29213400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_who/pseuds/Mari_who
Summary: This is a sequel work to The Double Rose, which can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747209/chapters/57032986.Expect olde Englishe talkynge, romance in both senses, and folklore tropes.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 44





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel work to The Double Rose, which can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747209/chapters/57032986.
> 
> Expect olde Englishe talkynge, romance in both senses, and folklore tropes.

Once upon a time - 

Once upon a time, so long ago, there was a little boy who lived in a little green palace with his mother, the most beautiful person in the world. He, and she, and their servants, were all very happy together. The little boy had his very own room and its walls were painted like a forest; but sometimes he liked his mother’s room better, its soft colors of rose and gold, and the smell of her perfume. There was a garden for them to play in, and he spent many happy hours there. His mother helped him begin to learn his letters, and to read from simple books, and when he was very good she gave him sweet little cakes to eat, dripping with honey.

His mother went away sometimes, and he felt unease then, though he did not have a name for the feeling; the servants kept him well, and she always came back. 

“I will always come back to you, little one,” she told him.

So he put that nameless feeling aside.

He helped the cook bake a cake for his mother, and she laughed with delight at his floury little face and the crooked icing letters that said HAPPY BIRTHDA (he had not left room for the Y.)

They went to a little blue lake and went out on it in a boat, and he laughed to see the fish jump for dragonflies.

She was kind, and taught him kindness; fair, and taught fairness.

He would never forget her.

***

He heard his mother cry out from the garden.

It woke him; at first he thought it was a bird, but the sound took the cadence of words, though he could not understand them.

It had been one week since his fifth birthday.

He slipped from his little bed and shuffled down the hallway, rubbing sleepy eyes, blanket around his shoulders like a cloak. The year was growing late, and there was a chill in the air. There were no servants in the halls to answer his questions.

There were men in the garden. One was holding his mother’s arms. He was very tall, and stern. The boy saw that his mother was weeping.

He threw open the door and ran to her, even as she cried out with dismay.

“Let go!” the boy shouted, and pushed at the tall man’s legs with all his might. “Let her go!”

Unmoved, the man looked down at him, and then at his mother.

“Please,” she said, voice choked and thick with tears. “He is too young. Have mercy.”

“Our King has ordered that the boy be properly educated.” The man looked down at her. Her tears showed as much affect upon him as the child’s hands had. “I know it pains you, milady, but a child must grow into a man. Keeping him here will make him weak.”

“Oh, weakness and strength,” she said, “He does not understand either, not truly - “

“My lady.” The man took his hands from her arms, and for a moment neither of them moved. Staring at each other. “I have my orders.”

Angry strength held her gaze up for a moment more; but the other two men moved closer. The boy saw his mother’s head droop upon her neck. She sighed like a tired mare.

Then she knelt, and took his hands.

“My son,” she said, and he began to cry, because her voice sounded so strange.

She bent and pressed her forehead to his, pulling him into her embrace. He closed his eyes and wished, wished, wished for the men to go away.

“I will find you,” she whispered.

And then the men took him away.

***

The three tall men had three tall horses, and for a little while this revelation quite knocked the tears out of the boy; he had never seen real destriers, only a pony or two. Settled on a saddle before one of the men he felt twenty feet in the air, and grasped the horse’s mane with pudgy fingers.

But they rode for hours...and hours...and hours.

He cried with fear, and exhaustion, and finally fell asleep in the saddle, when the men would not comfort or cosset him; they were terrifying ogres in his dreams.

They camped in a clearing under pine trees, and went on in the morning, after breaking fast on thin porridge. The horses followed a trail that climbed higher and higher, into hills that seemed like mountains to the boy, and he never could remember how long that journey truly lasted. It seemed endless.

But it ended.

This castle was unlike his home as chalk is unlike cheese; its stone was dark and hard with sharp corners and forbidding spires. The horses’ hooves clanged like harsh bells on the bridge they crossed, and trumpets screamed through brazen throats from the parapet at their approach.

The portcullis and the shadowed entrance beyond it were a giant’s maw, a dragon’s throat; and the boy began to cry and then to scream as the men dismounted and pulled him towards it. He dug his heels into the stone, and kicked and fought. But he was too small.

They took him into that shadow.

And the iron teeth closed behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy reunion of friends.

The rain would not stop.

It stripped the flaming coat of autumn like a crawling scavenger, leaving skeletal trees to claw at the sky. The sun when it shone gave no warmth and little light. Thick mud clotted the roads, making any travel misery; tempers shortened; the world seemed gross and threatening, joyless, full of dumb malice. And it was not even winter yet.

Artemis loved it. Miserably confused by her fellow humans and their plights, she threw herself headlong into her profession. She haunted the wood like a spirit, wrapped in a mottled cloak, an oiled pouch at her side to keep her bowstrings dry. Neither hart nor hare were safe from her, and she swelled with pride that her family would have meat enough through the winter, and let that pride buttress her heart against the question lying unanswered within. 

Not one soul had seen Kore since the night Artemis climbed Demeter’s walls and found her friend within, wan and gravid. And swearing the child was not Apollo’s. Yet not two days later the engagement was announced, at Sunday service, church bells aringing and Demeter’s face like a stone wall.

And no mention of the babe, though tongues already wagged in kitchens and corners throughout the village, and likely beyond. Nothing short of Kore traipsing up and down the Kingsroad in a corset tighter than a miser’s fist would stop them now, and that would never happen, so.

She returned from one day-long hunt to find Leto busily happy; no need to say aloud that the marriage would tidily increase their family’s fortunes. She would say only that Kore was such a dear, and how sweet their babes would be, how she looked forward to the grandmother’s role of rocking chair and child-cosseting. And she began to cast speculative looks at Artemis.

Apollo strutted through the days smug as a tomcat, and she longed to put one of her goose-fletched arrows through his bright and hateful eye.

Another trek into the wood, two days this time, returning with a brace of pheasant and two fat raccoons to find Eros waiting in her mother’s parlor, uncharacteristically uncoiffed and all aflutter because Demeter had turned him away at her gate. “I misdoubt _all_ of this!” he hissed to her, cornered by his intense concern. “There’s no sense in it, and all ill-omened by this damned rain! We _must_ do something.”

“There’s nought to do,” she told him roughly, and shouldered her way outside as he called after her.

She fled back into the woods and wandered until a glorious ten-pointed buck caught her huntress’ eye. It was wily, and lucky, and she followed it through a day and a night and another day, through shaded dells and mossy grottoes, over exposed hilltops where hawks’ cries split the thin air. At last, bereft of sleep, he stumbled; and that was all she needed.

Fortunate for her that a stream trickled nearby. Butchering was messy work.

She built a little sledge of branches and buckskin to carry her prize, and set back towards town, trudging with single-minded purpose. Focused on her task. Hiding from her heart.

So when the forest stilled around her, she did not notice. 

When the cold wet wind brought the whinny of a horse to her, she did not hear.

And when she pulled her burden into a little clearing, a mossy, empty space surrounded by peeling birch trees, she did not see the horse and rider waiting there until she had almost walked right into them.

Hardly had the shape registered in her mind - towering tall, a black-cloaked form over a black horse - before she jumped back and took her bow in hand. She was brave and strong, but not wholly immune to superstition; and this rider seemed a faceless menace in the cold wood, an intruder, eldritch and malign.

“Come no closer!” she said, summoning anger to chase the fear-chill from her veins. 

The rider did not move closer, but tilted its head beneath the cloak’s hood. 

“Artemis, Leto’s daughter,” it said in a deep voice flattened by the wet air. “Am I right?”

“You’ve no right to question me, varlet,” she hissed, full of indignation. “Turn your beast and ride back to wherever spawned you. I am not minded for conversation, and you’ll not find me an easy target!”

Her stout bow she strung in a trice, and it bent silently as she pulled an arrow back to her cheek; not pointed yet at the stranger, but near enough, an unspoken threat. Her heart sung in her chest for blood.

“Aye, tis Artemis indeed,” said another voice, behind her, sweet to the ear and full amused. “Pray, my friend, lower your weapon! All is well.”

Artemis held her pose for a heartbeat as her thoughts and feelings seemed to explode within her; then relaxed her arm, with practiced care.

She turned, and Kore was behind her, astride a grey mare; hale, and real, and smiling.

“God’s _foot_ ,” Artemis swore, and knuckled water from her eyes - rain, surely. “You could have sent a letter!”

And then they laughed like fools.

***

“Go,” Aphrodite said lightly, “away.”

Eros did not look up from the bed, and his response was muffled by pillows. “Tis my chamber, Mother; YOU go away.”

Instead, she came further into his darkened room, and briskly ripped away his coverlet. Beneath it he lay fully clothed, rumpled and wrinkled, hair uncombed, wrapped in a cultivated aura of despair - beneath which only those who knew him best might detect actual woe. He half-rose, reaching for the blanket, and sank back down when his grasp missed. “Leave me be,” he groaned. “My heart is sore.”

“Your _arse_ will be sore if you do not get out of my house,” Aphrodite said. “I cannot endure both this weather and your miserable self-pity. Up. Dress. Out. Do something useful. Or continue to do nothing, but not _here_.”

“Pitiless scold,” he whined, but she swatted at his feet with a sharp hand, and grudgingly he rose.

Eros did not condone adventure; it was bad for the complexion. Even as a child he had played reluctantly, dragged past his own objections into whatever grubby or athletic pursuits his peers insisted upon. He did like running - it required little thought, got no dirt on his clothing, and kept his calves fit - but the world was all mud. There was nowhere he wished to go and nothing he wished to do, beyond seeing his friend; thus he steeled his spine for adventure, and dressed accordingly. 

Halfway down the road to Demeter’s lands, at a thickly forest-lined curve in the road where one could not see ten feet ahead or behind, his mount - Aphrodite’s pampered white gelding - snorted and shied, nearly tumbling him into the mud. He clutched the reins, cursing, then saw what had alarmed the beast: a cloaked shape coming out of the trees, hands outstretched for the horse’s bridle.

He pulled away, urging the horse into a run - he rode well, though reluctantly - and was almost past the curve before recognizing the voice calling out to him.

The _voices_.

"Christ!" he shouted, and heaved the steed to a sloppy, mud-footed stop, nearly tumbling himself over its head. He slid from the saddle unmindful of the consequences to his boots - they, like the horse, were Aphrodite's anyway - and sloshed back to the treeline, where he met Artemis in her mottled cloak, and beside her, the one he most wanted to see in all the world. Their gazes met, wordless; what need be said? Nothing, it seems, as the three friends fell readily into grateful and wordless embrace under the dripping trees.

"God above, but you had me frightened for you," Eros said after a bit. He took smiling Kore by the shoulders and pushed her back, to better cast a measuring eye up and down her form; whistling low and awed at the swell of her belly. "Our huntress here told me, but I'd hardly believed…"

"Well, believe," Kore said, and laughed softly. "Tis not the future I'd expected, but I am not displeased...are you, dear friend?" Her face still smiled, but her eyes held a sliver of worry. "You'll not despise me, will you?"

Eros snorted. His horse echoed the sound, shaking its head; they ducked the spray of raindrops.

"Come you lot," Artemis said, "let us get under a roof before you catch your deaths out here. He's waiting, and I have questions he would be wise to answer." Her voice was full of grim promise.

"He?" Eros asked.

Kore elbowed Artemis in the side, gently, and turned from the road back into the woods. "You'll see," she said. "Come, there's a game path here to the old lumber-cottage, which is sound enough for a few hours' chat. All will be revealed!"

"I will take you at your word for that," Eros warned, and followed the two women. The horse snorted again, but submitted itself to be led; and soon enough all had vanished between the trees, leaving only hoofprints and birdsong behind them.

***

In due time they reached the cottage. Twas not truly a lumber-mill - such industry was found nearer the large rivers, and this land had only streams and rills for miles around - but the builder had worked that trade in his youth, and built his home away from others, in the trees where he felt most at home; and the Lord had taken him nigh three years ago, with no issue or heirs to claim his bequeathement. Thus the cottage, with its cunning cedar-shingle roof and its round stone hearth, had stood abandoned since then, home only to dust and mice, and visited only by superstitious children who dared each other so, or hunters caught out overnight with no other shelter.

Eros heard, before he came out of the trees, horses nickering a welcome to his own; they were tethered to the porch-rail, a tall black and a smaller, graceful grey, and he tied Aphrodite's white next to them, where a water-trough and a pile of grass had been set for their ease. He could see firelight dancing inside the cottage as Kore and Artemis passed inside, and wondered just who had kept that fire while the women had been out collecting him.

He toed off his mud-choked boots on the porch, and went inside, and shut the door behind him.

Inside it was warm and dry. A black pot bubbled merrily on its tripod over the fire, filling the room with the scent of stewing venison; Artemis was scrubbing out wooden bowls by the back door, and Kore has found a cloth to spread out over a rough-hewn table before the hearth.

And at that table sat a man, smiling and shelling a pile of hazelnuts with strong and nimble fingers.

A man Eros knew.

"My - my lord judge," he croaked through a throat suddenly dry and tight.

"Eros, son of Aphrodite," the man said in return, and stood. "It has been some years; thou hast grown into a man, I see."

His mind quite blank with shock, Eros could think of no reply, and bowed low to hide his mental stumble.

No less shocked was he to see his little friend Kore move to stand beside the high judge, and slip her hand into his, with a warm and familiar smile.

"I see I need not introduce my betrothed," she said.

Eros' knees failed him, and he sat down with a thump right there on the rugless floor, and stared.

"Aye, as I expected," Artemis muttered. 

"You said he would faint; be charitable," Kore chided, and came forth to help her friend rise. "Breathe, Eros; all is well. Come and eat with us. All will be explained."

Thunder rolled above, faint with distance; and Artemis put more wood on the fire.

"Half a glass till stew," she said. "So. Talk."


End file.
